Friday, February 19, 2010

What's new

I haven't posted in a long time. Every time I think of posting, I feel that I don't have anything to say. I would really like to post more and i would really like to keep up on my writing because I have some ideas for things I would like to publish.

So here is what is new at the Sans House. Actually, I am sans auto; I do have a house. Actually, I drove my wife's car to work three times this week due to needing to be places across town in time frames that made the bicycle unreasonable.

First an update on the chickens. After the problems with wildlife, we have 7 chickens left and they have started laying. Tuesday we got 8 eggs (I think that was from a couple of days). Wednesday we got 2. Thursday 6, and today we got 5. I couldn't be more pleased with the amount of eggs we are getting from the chickens. The chickens range most of the day and they have actually turned out to be a little smarter than I initially anticipated. On cold, snowy days with high winds I will open the door to their henhouse and they will stick their heads out, but then turn right around and stay warm. Not as dumb as they initially seem.

My compost pile is coming right along and feel really good about the progress of the garden... at least in thought. We have big plans for the garden, but with several inches of snow still on the ground, we haven't progressed much.

The next step is bees. I have recently found that I enjoy making soap. I also like eating sweet things. It seems logical then, that I should start a bee hive in my back yard. I will have fresh honey and bees wax for making soap and like products.

When I started looking into building a beehive, they said that it would cost at least $300 to get started, and really it would take more than that. I almost gave up there, but I figured I could save a bunch of money by making my own hive container. I then found that you can capture a swarm rather than buying the bees. I also discovered that I really had no desire to 'capture' a swarm, but have found some information on attracting a swarm. So I'm going to give it a shot. I will be building a hive in the next few weeks that I estimate will cost about $5 in supplies and a bunch of scraps that I have collected from various sources. I'll post pictures and stuff once I make more progress. I'm really excited to have bees.

I have things to post about, but it seems that I never do. I will change that and soon I will be posting several times a week.